Trans – Feministe

Transgender Day of Remembrance

Yesterday* was Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember and memorialize those who have been killed because of transphobia, and to bring attention to the damage transphobia does to trans and gender-nonconforming people. You can find events and information here.

Transphobia kills. Here are just some of the people who we’re memorializing this year.

Prudie takes on gender transition

And it’s… not great but also not the worst worst? Definitely not GOOD, but also understandable. Unless I am way off base. Am I way off base?

Why Breastfeeding Is A Feminist Issue

What’s going so wrong with the breastfeeding and formula-feeding conversation?

Start with the rampant individualism. Conversations about how you feed your baby tend to be preoccupied with women’s choices and decisions.. and then, blame. You know the conversation has little feminist value when you end up at a point where some poor, exhausted woman is trying to justify her decision to formula-feed her baby to you, or likewise, if some other poor woman is trying to justify her reasons for breastfeeding her toddler to you.

The main reason why the breastfeeding/formula feeding conversation is not moving forward is because it is bogged down with this individualism. I think there are several factors behind that. Firstly, public health messages, like those promoting breastfeeding, are notoriously heavy-handed and don’t deal well with nuance. This is a shame because people’s health is actually quite nuanced. Secondly, the breastfeeding message is, in part, a marketing message attempting to compete with the marketing messages of formula companies. When you do this you invariably make women consumers. Thirdly, we live in an era when motherhood is hyper-competitive and driven by perfectionism. Everyone is trying to Get It Super Right Or Terrible Consequences Will Happen For Their Children, and everything seems to come down to mothers and their choices. This leads to conversations that over-emphasise the role of choice in outcomes and also, that invariably run into the limitations of professionalising motherhood when it is still monetarily worthless. Finally, it’s just so terribly easy for a patriarchal culture to put all the responsibility on mothers and not chase the real culprits behind the big decline in breastfeeding and long-term breastfeeding rates in Western countries, which are things like inflexible workplace policies, the absence of universal maternity leave schemes, insufficient anti-discrimination legislation and hostile societal attitudes towards women’s bodies.

One of my good friends was an unapologetic formula-feeder with her children. She tried breastfeeding but having grown up with constant fat-shaming she was unable to ever feel comfortable with breastfeeding. When she found herself forcing her newborn to skip feeds during the very hot days of summer so as not to have to breastfeed in front of visiting family and friends and then panicking about whether she had dehydrated her tiny baby, she decided it was time to formula feed. She loved bottle-feeding – it helped her to start enjoying her baby. Was there much pressure on you, I asked, to breastfeed, and were people judgemental about your formula-feeding? Not that I noticed, my friend told me, but this world can apologise for how much it hated my body before I will apologise for not breastfeeding my children.

Good for her, except, what a bloody heart-breaking way to finally reclaim some space for yourself. Experiences like hers remind me what is so damn wrong with individualism in the breastfeeding/formula-feeding conversation. We’re pushing breastfeeding as a message but we sure aren’t embracing it as a culture. And we somehow blame individual mothers for the shortfall.

After recognising the problem with individualism, often the feminist discussion retreats to a place where everyone agrees to respect one another’s right to choose what is best for them and their babies and then to just all shut the hell up. Initially this makes sense, if everyone is shouting over the top of one another and everyone is feeling very defensive about their feeding decisions then let’s agree to turn down the volume. The problem is that once you turn the volume down on breastfeeding activism and formula-feeding choices we don’t get silence, we get another kind of noise. Because we exist not in a vacuum but in a misogynist culture.

I swear, I really do write about other issues in motherhood, even though I seem to have made breastfeeding my core topic in guest posts at Feministe.. and this is maybe why it has been my topic du jour, because breastfeeding is more than a choice about how to feed your baby, it is a lens through which you can see with absolute clarity the intersection between misogyny and motherhood. There are a million other possible examples but this area of mothering is a stunning case of it. Because, let me be clear about this – women get harassed and shamed and illegally evicted from public space for breastfeeding; women get threatened with losing custody of their children for breastfeeding for ‘too long’; women get ridiculed and bullied for trying to pump milk at work; women get described as a freak show for breastfeeding twins or tandem feeding; women get called names like ‘stupid cow’ or ‘filthy slut’ for breastfeeding; women get told they are sexually abusing their children for breastfeeding; women get told they’re not allowed to keep breast milk in communal fridges because it’s a dirty bodily fluid (and cow’s milk isn’t?); women are bullied into stopping breastfeeding because breasts are the sexual property of their husbands; women get told that breastfeeding is obscene in front of other people’s children or other people’s husbands; women get told their bodies are too fat and too saggy and too veiny to be exposed while breastfeeding; women get told to stay at home with their babies until they are no longer breastfeeding; women get instructed to throw blankets over themselves and their babies if they wish to breastfeed outside the home.. and on it goes. This is not the result of some peculiar sensitivity towards babies and small children eating, this does not happen with bottle-feeding, this is specifically about breastfeeding and it is about policing women’s bodies and lives.

Breastfeeding is a feminist issue not because mummy bloggers like me say it is, but because it’s about working to ensure that women and their bodies are considered as important (as normal) as men and their bodies. Something happens for all of us – regardless of whether we are breastfeeders or not – when a woman is allowed to breastfeed, in public, as a member of her community, while getting shit done in her life – it makes a statement that women belong, that women’s bodies belong, that women are here.

The animosity shown towards mothers who formula-feed is judgemental crusading and it should never be condoned by feminists but you are missing the big picture if you argue that bottle-feeding is demonised and breastfeeding is not – that we’ve gone too far with lactivism. Quite simply, something is very frigging wrong in our world when women are harassed and shamed for doing something that women’s bodies do as a routine part of raising children. This should trouble all feminists.

Breastfeeding also provides an example of how deeply hostile workplace culture is towards mothers.

Breastfeeding can be hard work in the beginning. (I got the latch so messed up when I breastfed my first baby that in the first couple of weeks I almost ended up with the end of my nipple torn off. My baby would finish a breastfeed and dribble blood out of her mouth. I know, so vampire. All those years of averting my slightly horrified gaze from mothers breastfeeding in public when I was young did not prepare me at all well when I came to breastfeed my own baby). Breastfeeding in those early months requires a lot of energy. You need to be eating and drinking and resting regularly or you can’t sustain a milk supply. (Try chasing dairy cows around the paddock all day long and see how much milk you get from them in the evening). This is an excellent argument for maternity leave, lactation breaks in the workplace and generally supporting new mothers. But it also shows you how far we have to go, because in the United States there still isn’t a universal paid maternity leave scheme and even for those who do have access to maternity leave it is usually woefully short. No sooner do you get breastfeeding established and bang! you’re back at work (full-time, of course), and separated from them all day long while now being expected to suddenly get used to a breast pump. And then, oh, breastfeeding didn’t work out for them, what could possibly be the explanation?

When feminists write about these tensions for mothers there is a tendency to argue that because it is so difficult to breastfeed in these circumstances that we need to back-off about breastfeeding. I’m a little sceptical of this strategy, though I think it comes from a good place. Women are entitled to their choices, of course, let’s not head back into individualism, but isn’t it awfully convenient that we never question the institutions of power that happen to arrange themselves in such a way that women have little real choice about breastfeeding?

Because here is the other thing about breastfeeding. Breastfeeding is lazy. Ultimately, I came to love breastfeeding as a mother because I am quite lazy. Breastfeeding is fast food. Breastfeeding is multi-tasking. Breastfeeding is portable. Breastfeeding is unstructured and unscheduled. All of these elements are very pleasing to lazy people, like me. So, it annoys me no end as a feminist that we, as a Western culture, stigmatise breastfeeding when in the long-run it can often make mothers’ and children’s lives easier.

I can’t help but be suspicious that we prioritise solutions to this work-life conflict that suit a model of workplace built around men’s lives and that consistently challenge women to find new ways of adapting without ever questioning whether our economy could be moulded just a little more fairly around care work and dependency. Because, dependence is not deviant behaviour – being young, being old, being unwell, being hurt and healing, being disabled – it’s normal life. And this is not hippy stuff; this is just finding a better way of working with capitalism. For that matter, breastfeeding is not hippy, it just is. It’s not some special gift, it’s not a sacrifice, it is just the way mammals generally feed their young.

If we were more accepting of breastfeeding on those grounds instead of trying to up-sell it then maybe we wouldn’t be stuck in such an endless loop of defensiveness with formula-feeding choices. Yes, breastfeeding has nutritional and immunity merits but it is also offers a way of being close with a baby and that, in itself, is valuable enough. There are other ways to experience that closeness, of course, and mothers shouldn’t be forced to parent in that way if they don’t want to, but for those who do, we shouldn’t sabotage them. And this is where the feminist conversation must be particularly careful, and it’s a tricky juggling act, but in our desire to neutralise all that ridiculous individualist blaming of women for their choices we often diminish the significance of their choices to them. Because when we say breastfeeding is not all that important we silence the grief some women feel about not having been able to breastfeed and we take away the sense of achievement other women feel about breastfeeding in spite of multiple obstacles, but possibly worst of all, we undermine the broader message every parent is trying to give, which is that workplace and institutional change needs to happen.. and it needs to happen soon.

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P.S. I want to acknowledge and thank one of the writers of Hoyden About Town, Lauredhel who stayed up late with me one night so I could bounce my arguments around with her and who steered me when I was off-track and reminded me of elements I had overlooked. Thank you, L.

P.P.S. I also want to acknowledge that although I have generalised about breastfeeding mothers here, as I recently discussed on Feministe, fathers sometimes breastfeed, too.

This is Wrong. Breastfeeding Support Groups Should Not Exclude Transgendered Breastfeeding Dads

As someone who has pretty much worked in bureaucracies her whole career I’m fairly patient with protocols and administrative processes, but every now and then I see people stumbling around in ‘red tape’ that has ceased to fulfill a purpose and which is now actively working against the original ideas behind the system, and it makes me feel very exasperated. Because, you know, we can actually change rules and regulations. If it makes sense to change it, and you have the power to change it, then fricking change it.

This is one of those times. La Leche League (LLL) is an amazing organisation and they do terribly vital work but this needs to change.

Milk Junkies is a breastfeeding and attachment parenting blog written by a transgendered dad in a gay relationship who is breastfeeding his baby son. (You should read it, he’s a great writer). On his blog he has been writing about his experiences as a new dad, and particularly, about breastfeeding after having had chest surgery. The writer of this blog, Trevor has had a strong relationship with LLL and now wants to train to become a group leader with the organisation but this is what happened:

In reading, please remember this: I LOVE La Leche League. Its books, meetings and online resources made breastfeeding possible for me. My experiences with my local LLL chapter have been fantastic and I am extremely grateful for this.

It seems that the decision regarding my leadership application comes down to policy: “Since an LLLC leader is a mother who has breastfed a baby, a man cannot become an LLLC Leader.” I understand that I don’t fit into LLL’s definition here, I just think that their definition is poor. I believe that the point of the above statement is that in order to be a leader, you must have breastfed a baby for a certain length of time. It is your experience that counts in peer-to-peer support. At the time the policy was written, the authors assumed that men wouldn’t/couldn’t breastfeed, so they defined a leader as a woman. I kinda doubt that many people envisioned my own scenario. I think that the interpretation of the policy should evolve.

Advice to all organisations seeking social change: whenever you come across someone who faces enormous obstacles of exclusion and yet finds the stamina to pursue a particular interest in being involved with what you’re doing, and what you’re doing is about social change, then you welcome them with open fricking arms. This is someone who brings invaluable drive, perspective and experience to your organisation, and your organisation needs that – because social change is hard work and to be effective it needs to be meaningful. You will not ever get there while excluding those who believe in and share your purpose. If you’re about social change, and this includes governments, then you need to be especially open to adaptation.

If you have to change rules to include them, you change them. This is why I hate Australia’s refugee policy, it’s why I hate the way some states in the US puts homeless, single black mothers in jail for sending their kids to good schools, it’s why I hate certain branches of feminism for persisting with transphobia and it’s why I hate the fact that LLL is excluding a transgendered breastfeeding dad from becoming a group leader.

(I welcome comments on this post but here are two important guidelines.. we will not let this discussion become an anti-LLL thread and nor will we let it become transphobic. As I suggested in my first post at Feministe – we tread lightly in any discussions of mothering/fathering and care work because we need to recognise that we are all walking about on the unpaid toil of others. Further, this particular topic involves an individual family and their lives and they need to be treated with respect).

Bad Advice: Should I Tell My Cousin’s Boyfriend That She Was Assigned Male at Birth?

NO. No you should not. No no no no no definitely not.

Hateful Girl Scout Mad That Girl Scouts Lets In Girls

“Wait, what?” you ask. “I thought the Girl Scouts was for girls?” And it is! But one California teen haz a mad because the Girl Scouts created a policy to let in all girls — including trans girls. She wants everyone to boycott Girl Scout cookies, because the Girl Scouts should be punished for not ostracizing a little trans girl from their organization. If you want to be extra-horrified, read the Baptist Press’s take on the issue. And then make yourself feel better by ordering a few extra boxes of Samoas this year.

“She always knew who she was.”

The Boston Globe has a sweet, heartbreaking, heartwarming story of Nicole Maines, her twin brother Jonas, and their parents. Nicole knew from toddlerhood that she was a girl, and her family and friends are supporting her in developing “a physical female body that matches up to [her] image of [her]self.” Nicole is fourteen.

From the beginning, Nicole* liked Barbies, mermaids, and princess dresses, wanted to know when she would “get to be a girl,” and cried hating her body. Identical twin Jonas told their father, “Dad, you might as well face it. You have a son and a daughter.” It took them an adjustment period, more than a few mistakes, and a lot of research, but they did–Wayne and Kelly Maines took the bold step of… trusting their child. They contacted a physician who specializes in child gender management services, and with judgment and cruelty from some sides and acceptance and support from others, they embraced their daughter. By fifth grade, she was wearing long hair and dresses and living fully as Nicole. Now, at age 14, under the supervision of the physicians of the Gender Management Services Clinic at Children’s Hospital in Boston, she is taking drugs to suppress puberty until she can begin estrogen therapy to help develop a grown woman’s body.

Read the Maines’s story at the Globe–there really is more to it than I can do justice. Even with the judgment they’ve suffered–and the family ended up moving to a different town to escape the abuse of some in their community–what’s striking is the support they’ve gotten from the kids’ friends and their new school. Jonas, of course, loves–and is protective of–his sister, and their parents love having a daughter. And every family, whether their children are transgender or cisgender, could learn a lesson from them.

“I believed in Nicole,” her mother said. “She always knew who she was.”

*post has been edited to correct name and pronoun errors on my part; discussion of that is in comments

Auf’ed Is A Word In Every Gender: A Few Reality TV Notes

So here’s the thing: while waiting this past weekend in my just-across-the-block-from-the-evacuation-zone apartment for the threatened transformation of New York from this:

Into this:

…I did not spend my weekend writing posts for Feministe, as was my brief, but instead watching Project Runway.

Project Runway Australia.

I won’t qualify Project Runway as a guilty pleasure. It’s a full-on, bells and whistles, so much fun that even a lapsed Catholic can enjoy it simple pleasure. I started watching the U. S. show in its fourth season, and have been devoted ever since. (Although I do have a few words for you, Mr. Christian Soriano! Love your clothes–but lose the catchphrase.)

But what are you going to do when you’re all caught up on the current season, and still need your “let’s make a dress from tile grout and shower curtains!” fix? Easy–watch the international editions, starting with Australia.

So fiancée and I huddled next to our cats and our “Go Bag” to watch Season Two of PR: A. Which leads me to the subject of today’s musings-posing-as-a-post: reality shows, and transness, and Anthony Capon.

Reflections

The New York Times ran this article on Sunday about, of all things, transgendered women. And while mocking the Grey Lady was my rainy day activity over at my blog–oh, Ross Douthat, keep chasing that rainbow!–I have to give them credit this time: they actually called trans women women, with nary a birth name to be seen.

That’s progress, I guess, or what passes for it in these times.

The article is about pumping, having liquid silicone injected into your body in order to enlarge things you want enlarged and contour the things that have the wrong contours. If you are lucky, you will get injected with medical-grade silicone by someone with medical training. If you are not, you’ll get industrial-grade silicone squirted into your flesh by someone who has seen it done a few times.

Pumping is one of those things you learn about when you are trans. Something that people will cluck over, if you’re on the right side of the tracks that day–because it is dangerous, and potentially disfiguring, and with money and the right doctor you can have all those things done nice and neat. It’s a class boundary, a lot of the time–because so many trans people aren’t on the right side of the tracks, have about as much hope of navigating a hostile medical system as being called up to read the lottery numbers on Channel 5, and despair of ever assembling the thousands of dollars at one time just about any procedure that has the modifier “trans” attached to it would cost. In a world of bad ideas and lousy options, what’s one more?

But that’s not what I want to talk about.

Transformative Change

Guernica interviews Dean Spade, the first openly trans law professor, about his activism and work with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project. It’s a must-read, but the lead particularly caught my eye: The average life span of a transgendered person is twenty-three years.

The whole interview is amazing, and do read it. A sample:

A lot of my writing is about trying to understand what role legal work has in strategies for transformative social change. Part of the reason that question is so important right now is that there has been widescale attacks on social movements over the last thirty or forty years in response to the very meaningful social movements in the sixties and seventies that had very transformative demands, that were seeking a redistribution of wealth and of life chances in really significant ways. What’s emerged in their place is a very thin national narrative about social change that often centers on the law and often says that groups that are marginalized or experiencing subjugation of various kinds should just win lawsuits and pass laws to change their lives.

But the hard thing is that few lawsuits actually have those effects. On one hand, a lot of laws are not enforced or never implemented. For example, in a lot of places it’s illegal to fire or not hire someone for being trans, but that happens every single day. Very little can be done about that in the current framework. The systemic homelessness and poverty many trans people face doesn’t seem to be sufficiently addressed by passing a law that says we shouldn’t discriminate against trans people. Law reforms declaring race and disability discrimination illegal haven’t solved concentrated joblessness, poverty, homelessness, or criminalization of people with disabilities and people of color. Often people who the law says should have equal chances at jobs still don’t have equal chances at jobs, and they’re still on the losing side of the severe wealth divide in the U.S. So how can we start to strategize for social movements that don’t believe the myth that changing the law is the key way to change people’s lives?

Another thing is that at times what law reform does do is put a window dressing of fairness on systems that are deeply unfair. Maybe some of the people, the most enfranchised in a particular group, will be somewhat better off through law reforms, because they have a lot of other kinds of wealth or privilege in terms of the overall system. Oftentimes, in that way law reform stabilizes a status quo; it stabilizes the existing field of maldistribution. Those people who are worst off really don’t see a lot of change, or may be further marginalized.

A lot of us are trying to look at what has really been powerful in the history of the U.S. in terms of changing people’s lives, and that’s been broad social movements led by people directly impacted by the issues. They often have demands that far exceed what the law could ever give, demands that are not going to be passed by Congress or won in courts. Those demands actually confront the things that America is based on, like white supremacy or settler colonialism. The law can be a useful tool to address certain needs for certain communities, but it’s nowhere near a silver bullet that will make people equal. That mythology is the part of the mythology of our nation, a mythology that people are often not willing to question if they are benefiting from existing conditions of maldistribution.